DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 6 



mothers was Elizabeth Stewardson, sister of Dr. Thomas Steward- 

 son, an eminent physician, scientist and botanist of his time, 

 and from the Stewardsons doubtless came the strong interest in 

 natural history so manifest in Stewardson Brown as well as 

 in his brother Amos. 



We three boys had very many interests in common — a love of 

 nature, of music and of out-door athletic exercises — and we 

 became inseparable companions. Indeed for a period of more 

 than ten years we spent almost our entire spare time at Restalrig 

 or in the immediate vicinity mainly in collecting and studying 

 specimens of plants, animals and minerals. Stewardson was 

 preeminently the botanist of the party and Amos the geologist, 

 although we each absorbed a healthy amount of knowledge upon 

 all branches of natural history. 



In 1882 in conjunction with my late brother Frederick D. 

 Stone Jr., and Brown's younger brothers, Herbert and Francis 

 H. , we formed the ' ' Wilson Natural Science Association ' ' 

 which met in our house where a room had been transformed 

 into a museum for the housing of our collections; and here 

 weekly sessions were held and papers read with all the formal- 

 ity of a more serious organization. While our activities were 

 admittedly very local in scope, I have since been impressed 

 with the admirable basis that they afforded for our future 

 work, better, I am inclined to think, than would have been 

 derived from less concentrated work over a wider field. Our 

 aim was to become familiar with all of the animal and plant 

 life of that part of Germantown as well as the minerals and 

 rocks, and I think we nearly succeeded. 



For several seasons Stewardson and his brothers spent the 

 months of July and August with an aunt at Pt. Pleasant, N. J. 

 and there he became acquainted with the wonderful flora of the 

 Pine Barrens as well as with the shore birds, marsh finches, 

 gulls and fish-hawks, and with new and rare insects, washed up 

 on the beach and the shore of the Manasquan river, and many 

 were the additions to our museum from this source. Together 

 we visited my ancestors' homestead in central Chester Co. , Pa. , 

 and in 1886 spent a week at York Furnace on the lower 

 Susquehanna where we found a still different fauna and flora. 



